Latest News - Page 315

The Financial Times has admitted it made a lapse in judgment when it posted the article "$1.4bn is a lot to fall through the cracks, even for Tesla," which highlighted a purported gap between the company's capital investment and asset values.

The author of the article, Dan McCrum, has posted a follow-up article titled "Filling in that Tesla 'crack'" where the first line of that article is "Mea culpa," which is a Latin phrase that translates to "my fault" or "through my fault." McCrum goes on to explain the purported discrepancy that he reported "may have a benign explanation," which seems to be gathered from an expert who got in touch with FT to explain how to look at Tesla's books correctly.

McCrum attempted to highlight the discrepancy between Tesla's $6.3 billion capital investment in the second half of last year and the smaller $4.9 billion rise in the value of gross assets the company reported, claiming Tesla seemingly lost the difference somewhere in the books. That simply isn't the case, or at least according to McCrum, who has now been informed about two explanations that can reconcile the figures: "payments for assets already purchased, and the possible disposal of depreciated property."

Intel's rumored to be preparing a fresh take on an Arrow Lake Refresh generation, so we might yet get new desktop CPUs from Team Blue later this year.

As VideoCardz picked up, one of the well-known hardware leakers on X, Jaykihn, posted to inform us that an Arrow Lake Refresh is seemingly back on the table (see above).

The leaker asserts that this new retake on the Core Ultra 200S chips will be different to the previously rumored refresh. (If you recall, speculation was rife about an Arrow Lake Refresh mid-2024, which Intel apparently cancelled).

Apple has reportedly placed a large order for $1 billion worth of NVIDIA's new GB300 NVL72 AI servers, powered by its beefed-up Blackwell Ultra AI GPUs according to Loop Capital.

Loop Capital's note explained that Apple is "officially" in the large server cluster Gen AI game, with Super Micro and Dell being Apple's key server partners. Apple's continued Siri AI stumbles might have seen an internal shift that is putting even more importance on AI, and that requires the best AI hardware on the market right now: NVIDIA's new GB300 NVL72 AI servers.

NVIDIA's new GB300 NVL72 AI servers cost around $3.7 million to $4 million each, so we're looking at around 250 new NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 AI servers, made by both Super Micro and Dell. This should see Apple with a Gen AI LLM cluster, which should change things up for Apple as the company seems to be having issues with its AI/ML (machine learning) versus GenAI.

Those who are keenly awaiting the release of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will be disappointed to hear that the game has been delayed (again).

We're now told that Bloodlines 2 is set to arrive in October 2025 (on Xbox, PS5 and PC), although that's barring any potential further delays, of course.

As Gamespot noticed, Marco Behrmann, who is executive producer of Bloodlines 2, clarified what's been happening with the title:

In a market where Assassin's Creed: Shadows just dropped, few games dominate discussions more than the series' return to feudal Japan. As it turns out, you don't need to be the center of conversation to dominate the Steam charts.

Schedule I, an indie drug-dealing simulator, is currently the most popular game on Steam. Released yesterday, it quickly climbed to the top of the "Trending Games," "Popular Releases," and "Hot Releases" charts on SteamDB. The game currently holds an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam based on over 4,000 reviews, and peaked with 116,408 concurrent first-day players - almost double that of Assassin's Creed: Shadows.

As the Steam community continues to react to the new title, these numbers may only continue climbing. The game is currently in early access and available with a 15% discount on Steam for its first week.

Europe's Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPCN) has published an enforcement action with the European Commission to prevent rampant predatory monetization practices within video games, particularly with the game Star Stable Online.

The enforcement action explains that the EU views specific monetization strategies in the form of in-game currencies as designed to manipulate and deceive customers into spending more money on the game.

The notice has singled out Star Stable Online, an MMORPG/horse simulation developed by Star Stable Entertainment who is now feeling the sight of the EU regulator that is now requiring the developer to be more transparent with the cost of its in-game items, while simultaneously requesting a soft ban on in-game currency in general as there currently isn't a law in place to prevent it.

The physical sale of Assassin's Creed Shadows has been quite successful in the UK, with reports now indicating the latest addition to the Assassin's Creed franchise has now outsold Ubisoft's commercial failure Star Wars Outlaws by a considerable margin.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has moved more physical copies than Star Wars Outlaws in just 1 week than Outlaws did in 3 months. Additionally, Shadows' physical sales are approximately the same as Assassin's Creed Mirage, with the higher price of Shadows pulling in more revenue.

The data provided by The Game Business states that general sales in the UK are 63% of what Assassin's Creed Valhalla achieved in November 2020, with the discrepancy in sales being attributed to the pandemic causing a huge spike in software sales, and Valhalla being available physically on more platforms at launch.

Almost regardless of accolades, it's extremely common for games to ship Game of the Year editions these days. It turns out, according to a former executive, Valve originally pioneered the strategy - leveraging Half Life's critical success to boost lagging unit sales.

As reported by PCGamer, Monica Harrington, one of the founding members of Valve, and former Chief Marketing Officer, gave a talk at GDC diving into the brand's history. Looking back at the late 1990s, the company was facing challenges with moving copies of Half-Life. During a period where critical reception was strong but sales started to slow, the team needed a fresh angle to push the game further.

According to Harrington, adding a "Game of the Year" sticker and updating the box art had a huge impact on the game's sellability. The original release featured a plain orange cover with just the Half-Life title and logo. But with the awards Half-Life had earned by then, the "Game of the Year" label was a legitimate claim. Pairing that with new artwork featuring protagonist Gordon Freeman helped turn the game into a major commercial success, ultimately selling over 9 million copies over the next decade.

The highly anticipated sequel to the critically acclaimed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is still in development, with the studio behind it CD Projekt Red recently unveiling there are now more than 400 developers working on the project.

The Witcher 4 was recently unveiled at the Game Awards 2025, and while fans of the franchise are more than excited about sinking their teeth into a new world created by Polish developer CD Projekt Red, there will still be quite some time before the title releases. To speed up the development process, more hands have been brought on deck to assist in its creation, with CD Projekt Red recently revealing during an earnings report that it has hired 57 new developers in the last four months - 11 of those developers have begun work on The Witcher 4.

The remaining developers were moved to CD Projekt Red's other projects, such as the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, codenamed Orion, which got the biggest bump in developers by 20, bringing its total to 84 from 64. As for The Witcher 4, CD Projekt Red has an army of developers working on the project, and after the new additions to the team, the total number of developers working on the sequel has reached 411.

When it comes to the most offensive game franchises, games like Grand Theft Auto, Manhunt, and perhaps South Park come to mind. However, often forgotten is the Postal series, which is known for being one of the most deliberately offensive, nihilistic and chaotic game franchises in existence. Better yet, you'll be able to experience it in VR.

Postal 2: VR was announced at the VR Games Showcase. Almost twenty years after its controversial release, the 2003 first-person shooter will be reimagined for Steam VR, PlayStation VR2, and Meta Quest, developed in collaboration with Flat2VR Studios and Running With Scissors.

The game comes packed with all the features you'd expect from a VR iteration of a Postal game. Players can use motion controls to flip off pedestrians on the street, engage in over-the-top violence, and utilize the game's urination mechanic to their heart's content.

The Pentagon has released a statement regarding the messaging app Signal following the White House fumbling causing a national security issue when it added a reporter to a group chat with government officials discussing military strikes in a foreign country.

For those who are out of the loop the warning from the Pentagon about Signals came after The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported he was added to a group chat that among others, included key officials such as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. The topic of discussion was military strikes in Yemen, with the mention of timings, weapons used, and targets.

Reports indicate that a 2023 Department of Defense memo states government officials are banned from using mobile apps for "controlled unclassified information (CUI)." NPR states that military operations are many degrees more sensitive than CUI, which can include proprietary business information, tax records, law enforcement data, and personally identifiable data. The debacle is still unfolding in the Senate, with members of the Signal group chat now appearing before officials to answer questions about the legitimacy of the plans.

Ever wondered what Sea of Thieves would be like in space? Well, here's Wildgate, a recently unveiled team-based shooter by Moonshot Games, a team comprised of former Blizzard developers.

Wildgate was unveiled during the Dreamhaven showcase hosted by The Game Awards' Geoff Keighly and Mike Morhaime, former CEO of Blizzard Entertainment. Wildgate can be effectively summarized as Sea of Thieves in space, but it does have its differences. Here's how it works. Wildgate will pit five teams of four players against each other in a session-based, procedurally generated region of space called The Reach, where players will be tasked with finding "The Artifact" and escaping through a wildgate that will randomly appear.

The game focuses on team-based strategies with the end goal of escaping with the Artifact and their lives by collecting upgrades in the form of weapons, ship improvements, and materials used to maintain and upgrade the quality of the team's spaceship.

Capcom has detailed the first major free update for Monster Hunter Wilds, bringing back familiar monsters, adding new social spaces, quest types, and more. The update is set to arrive on April 4, adding a plethora of new features for early and mid-to-late game players.

The main addition is the return of Mizutsune, a popular monster from past titles, now appearing in Wilds for the first time. Players who have reached Hunter Rank 21 or higher can unlock the new mission by speaking to Kanya at the Scarlet Forest Base Camp. An eight-star Tempered version of Mizutsune will also be available for those looking for a higher-tier challenge. The update also adds new armor sets for both hunters and Palicos based on Mizutsune's materials.

Players can also jump into a new social area called the Grand Hub. Which features a new minigame, Barrel Bomb Bowling, that lets players roll explosives into targets for rewards like pendants and items. There's also a nightly performance by the Diva, adding a bit of flavor to the atmosphere. Squad management has also moved here and becomes accessible once you hit HR 16.

Apple's upcoming ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air is back in the headlines, this time with another CAD leak that compares the iPhone 17 Air against the iPhone 17 Pro to show just how thin that ultra-thin 5.5mm thickness really is. Check it out:

In a new post by X user Majin Bu, we're getting another CAD-powered look at the iPhone 17 Pro against the iPhone 17 Air, with the iPhone 17 Air being an ultra-thin 5.5mm to 6mm or so, with a maximum thickness of 9.5mm with the camera bump included.

Inside, the new iPhone 17 AIr will reportedly feature a 6.6-inch display, in-house A19 processor, 8GB of RAM, 24-megapixel front-facing camera, 48-megapixel rear-facing camera, Face ID technology, titanium casing, Apple's in-house C1 5G modem, and charging speeds of up to 35W power.

FigureAI has developed a new AI-powered walking controller for its Figure 02 humanoid robot, taking the android movement patterns into slightly more natural territory.

Announced yesterday, the update was showcased in new footage comparing the previous and current movement systems. There's a clear difference - while the robot's gait still appears mechanical, it now includes more human-like elements such as heel strikes, toe-offs, and synchronized arm swings. It's a subtle improvement, but enough to push the Figure 02 away from the rigid, protocol-droid motion of earlier iterations.

The system was trained entirely in simulation using reinforcement learning - a method where virtual robots learn to walk through trial and error. That training was then transferred directly to the real-world robot without manual tuning, allowing for consistent performance across multiple machines.

UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri says that Intel's freshly-minted CEO Lip-Bu Tan will most likely refocus on chip design in the short term, while securing big customers to strengthen its foundry business.

In his note to investors, Arcuri said that Intel is also reportedly working to finalize commitments from NVIDIA or Broadcom to use its semiconductor foundry business, while also advancing its new 18A manufacturing process. Intel is working on a new lower-power version of that 18A process node called 18AP, and should be appealing to chip companies.

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) is looking to compete directly against TSMC in the semiconductor space, with improvements to its advanced packaging technologies like its Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge platform that would compete against TSMC's CoWoS-L advanced packaging for HPC customers like NVIDIA and others.

Elon Musk has been on the receiving end of what could be viewed as a digital slam dunk by none other than Ubisoft over the SpaceX CEO's recent comments about Assassin's Creed Shadows.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO commented on a recent post by Mark Kern, who highlighted a sponsored post by Hasan Piker where he was promoting Assassin's Creed Shadows. Kern's post calls out Ubisoft for giving money to "terrorist-platforming streamers," which sparked a response by Musk, who called Piker a "fraud". Musk followed up with another reply saying, "Sell-out" would be more accurate. Objectively, he is promoting a terrible game just for the money."

Musk's last comment attracted a reply from the official Assassin's Creed X account, which wrote, "Is that what the guy playing your Path of Exile 2 account told you?" For those who don't know what the Assassin's Creed account is referring to, Musk recently admitted that he breaks terms of service (TOS) in Path of Exile 2 and Diablo IV by getting someone else to play his account to achieve his, at the time, world-renowned global top 20 rank.

Valve is reportedly in the optimization phase of development for Half-Life 3, which I'm really hoping gets announced officially on April 1, just for the developer to troll the entire world.

Half-Life 3 is reportedly codenamed "HLX" and was discovered during recent updates to Valve's other games including Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2, with a new video posted by Gabe Follower, who details a bunch of new discoveries, and some of them sound really, really exciting.

Valve is reportedly working on a new artificial intelligence (AI) system for its NPCs in Half-Life 3, that acts like LOD (level of detail) with the graphics side of the game. The way this works is how LOD will use higher-quality textures on the environment, characters, items, and more in close proximity to you, reducing the detail past a certain point so that your GPU isn't just loading textures unnecessarily at large distances away from you.

Napster has been acquired by Infinite Reality, a US-based VR company, for the sum of $207 million. The acquisition aims to leverage Napster's infrastructure as a subscription music service to build an immersive VR music platform for artists and fans.

The purchase was announced on Tuesday, with the tech startup announcing its bold plans to usher in the 'immersive era' of music. Napster's CEO, Jon Vlassopulos, wrote in a blog post:

AMD has been doing a truly amazing job in the APU market, with its new Strix Point and more so its flagship Strix Halo APUs dominating the laptop and handheld chip market... but it looks like the powerhouse Strix Halo APU is coming to the desktop.

In a recent interview with ASUS China General Manager Tony Yu and AMD CEO Lisa Su, Tony requested Lisa to make its Strix Halo APU transition to the desktop as well, with Lisa replying "yes, yes, of course!". AMD makes its Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" and "Strix Halo" APU processors for mobile platforms on the FP11 socket, with the AM5 socket housing desktop processors.

FP11 processors are larger than AM5 processors, but we've seen companies like Minisforum using its BD770i and BD790i which allowed a Ryzen 7 7745HX and 7945HX on a custom motherboard that could be used as a regular desktop. It looks like AMD is cooking up version of its Strix Halo APU for the desktop, and that is some exciting news.